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from wood and bed sheets, and a homemade sewing machine for making bogus German uniforms. Most astounding, perhaps, is a 44m-long tunnel below the chapel that French officers dug in 1941–42, before the Germans caught them. You can see some of these contraptions, along with lots of photographs, in the small but fascinating Fluchtmuseum (Escape Museum) within the palace. Several inmates wrote down their experiences later, of which Pat Reid’s The Colditz Story is the best-known account.

A section of the palace now houses a spark-ling new 161-bed DJH hostel ( 034381-450 10; www.colditz.jugendherberge.de; under/over 27yr €21.40/24.90) with incredibly up-to-the-minute facilities.

On weekdays bus 690 runs hourly to Colditz from Leipzig, or alternatively you can take a train to Bad Lausick and catch bus 613 from there. At weekends catch the train to Grossbothen then change to bus 619. The one-way trip takes between 90 minutes and two hours. The town is at the junction of the B107 and B176 roads between Leipzig and Chemnitz.

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CHEMNITZ

0371 / pop 244,000

Just like the majority of eastern Germany’s cities, Chemnitz had to reinvent itself post-Wende, and has done so with some measure of success. Known from 1953 to 1990 as Karl-Marx-Stadt, the GDR gave it a Stalinist makeover, and smokestack industries once earned it the nickname of ‘Saxon Manchester’. Such scars don’t heal easily, and with its thundering boulevards and prefab blocks the town still has a very Soviet feel. In fact every now and then you have to remind yourself you’re still in Germany.

But things are gradually improving, and nowhere is this more visible than in the revitalised city centre, now a pedestrianised glass-and-steel shopping and entertainment district. Add to that a lively cultural scene, one of Europe’s largest intact art-nouveau quarters and an unpretentious air, and you’ve got more than a few good reasons for a stopover.

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Orientation

The city centre, anchored by the Markt and encircled by a ring road, is about a 10-minute walk south of the train station via Bahnhofstrasse or the Soviet-flavoured Strasse der Nationen. Trams 4, 6 and 522 also link the two; get off at Zentralhaltestelle.

The little Chemnitz River, west of the city centre, flows north–south.

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Information

There are several banks with ATMS in the Markt area.

Main post office (Strasse der Nationen 2-4)

ReiseBank (Carolastrasse 2)

Tourist office ( 690 680; www.chemnitz-tourismus.de; Markt 1; 9am-7pm Mon-Fri, 9am-4pm Sat, 10am-4pm Sun)

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Sights

KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN CHEMNITZ

A palatial 1909 building, just off the Strasse der Nationen, shelters the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (Chemnitz Art Museum; 488 4424; adult/concession €6/3, in combination with Museum Gunzenhauser €12/6; 11am-6pm Tue-Sun), a high-calibre collection of 19th- and 20th-century German artists. The list of heavy hitters includes Caspar David Friedrich and Lovis Corinth and, most famously, the Chemnitz-born expressionist painter Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, a co-founder of the artist group Die Brücke.

Across town, a second branch, the new Museum Gunzenhauser ( 488 7024; Stollberger Strasse 2; adult/concession €7/4; 11am-6pm, closed Tue) displays a private collection of mainly 20th-century art including works by Otto Dix, Alexej von Jawlensky, Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and many others.

KARL-MARX-DENKMAL & AROUND

Near the corner of Strasse der Nationen and Brücken-strasse the 7.1m-high Karl Marx Monument catches the German philosopher on a very bad hair day in front of a nine-storey frieze, exhorting: ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’ in several languages. This rare vestige from the GDR era attracts left-wing demonstrators and skateboarders. Plans to remove it have themselves been scrapped.

Across the street, past the Stadthalle/Hotel Mercure complex, is the Roter Turm, a medieval defence tower.

DASTIETZ

The DAStietz (Moritzstrasse 20) is a former department store reborn as a busy cultural